RAZOVSKY AND THE RIVER OF BLINDNESS

Razovsky waded through the water, through reeds and bobbing plastic burger containers. Scum swam around his thighs, regrouping behind him, laughing. O scum! Televisions splashed in the rocks near the shore; a man waving a megaphone filled all the screens. Above him, a sun of yellow construction paper fluttered behind some clouds, coughed like a grandfather, fell asleep on the couch. An invisible marching band followed along at the banks, playing the anthem of each shtetl he passed. Razovsky had these eyebrows that crashed against his eyes. He cracked his knuckles and lapped at his lips. Razovsky pushed against the wind, as loose book pages flapped past his face: Polish, Yiddish, Russian, Hebrew, English, German. He'd been walking this river since before he was born and today he'd step out and see his own feet and feel the ground beneath them, sometimes solid, sometimes giving, and he'd walk up to a shack and pass through a door and sit down to eat dinner and he'd look at each face at the table, and each would have a nose in the middle, and he too would have a nose: everyone would have a nose and each nose two nostrils — so many nostrils! — and he would begin to tell everyone about his years in the river, and the shimmer of the moon would pour from his mouth.


Stuart Ross, 1 January 2007